Vision

How to spell vision

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce vision

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vision mean?

1. nounThe faculty of seeing, or a clear mental picture of a future plan or goal.

Vision in a sentence

• My vision is a bit blurry today.

• She has a clear vision for the company.

Where does vision come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin visio, meaning 'a seeing' or 'a thing seen', which was built on the verb videre, 'to see', through its past participle stem vis-. English took it in during the 1300s by way of Old French vision, where it carried the religious sense of a supernatural appearance or revelation. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from the act of physical sight to mental sight, giving us the modern idea of a far-sighted plan or imaginative foresight. The same vis- root sits inside a whole family of everyday words such as 'visible', 'television', 'visit', and 'supervise', all of which deal with seeing in some form. Because the -sion ending is pronounced as a soft 'zh' sound, writers occasionally hesitate over the spelling, but the clue is the visible vis- root that keeps the single 's'.

How the word is built

• vis (from videre: to see)
• -ion (noun suffix)